The Other Halves
by DelMarch
Summary: After hearing about Stark and Lilynette, Ikkaku and Yachiru discuss what it might mean for them. Spoilers for up to chapter 362 of the manga.


Dedicated to PeroxidePest, since she inspired it with her story, Only Half.

Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Bleach and its characters. I am just writing this for fun, I'm making no money from it.

***

**The Other Halves**

When Kusajishi Yachiru heard the reports about the extraordinary dual nature of the Primera Espada, her heart started beating so fast and so strongly that she feared for one moment that the excitement on her face would give her away. Thankfully, this happened during a lieutenants' meeting, and nobody there cared enough about her to keep such a close eye on her. Had she heard about this in Ken-chan's office and in Ken-chan's presence, things might have turned rather tricky indeed.

Instead, she spent the rest of the day in her usual fashion, eating astronomic quantities of food, terrorising and abusing subordinates, bullying Byakushi into giving her sweet buns, and devising new devious plans for the Shinigami Women's Association to carry out with Glasses-chan and Sad-chan. All that time, though, she was anxiously waiting for the night to come. She would go to bed as usual, she would wait for everyone else to go to sleep, and then...

*

He did not hear her arrive, of course not; she was far too light-footed for that. She could be very sneaky indeed when she wanted to be. However, she did very briefly release her unusually tightly-controlled reiatsu to warn him of her coming. It would not do if she made him yell in shock in the middle of the night.

They had not discussed this meeting. In fact, they had barely seen each other today. She had been busy visiting friends in other Divisions, while he had been out in Rukongai with a group of new recruits to train. They had shared a table for dinner, of course, but since Zaraki-taichou and Yumichika had been there too, there was simply no way they would take the risk of exchanging any kind of secret message, no matter how innocuous or well-coded they might think it was.

They did not _need_ to talk to realise that they had to meet, though. Those news about the Primera Espada had the potential to rock their world forever, and he knew she would be just as anxious as he was to discuss them. So he had waited until he was sure that Yumichika was fast asleep on the futon on the other side of the room, and he had left to wait for her in their usual meeting place.

*

"You've heard?"

"Che. 'Course I have. Read the report."

"And?"

"And what? They've heard it too, but they don't seem to have connected the dots, do they?"

"What if they do?"

"What _if _ they do? Isn't it what we want?"

"Yeah... I guess."

"..."

"Pachinko?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm scared."

"Yeah... Me too."

*

She had known it at the very second she had seen him for the first time. She had been incredulous, of course, because no matter how often she had wished she would meet someone like her, she had never really thought she ever would. And yet, here he was, standing there, and then fighting Ken-chan, and she had watched, fascinated, for a while...

Then of course, her attention had turned to the other one. He was as different from the one fighting Ken-chan as she was from Ken-chan himself - as was to be expected. He was a man, though, but then his extremely effeminate appearance more than made up for that. Just like her, he was just sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the battle to end, and she wondered what would happen to him if Ken-chan killed the baldy. She knew very well what would happen to _her_ if Ken-chan ever died - not that this would ever happen -, but for the first time she was forced to wonder how the situation would play in reverse.

As the minutes passed, she started to develop a certain respect for the baldy. It had been a very long time indeed since anyone had put up such a fight against Ken-chan, and he seemed nowhere about to give up yet. She could even see that rare, pleased smile beginning to appear on Ken-chan's face, and this made her very happy. Good baldy, giving Ken-chan so much fun!

Then her face fell slightly when she looked back at her own companion. He was worried, this much was obvious. Oh, he was trying to hide it, but it still showed. He had good reasons to fret, too: as well as Baldy was doing, he was not winning. He _could not_ win. Not against Ken-chan. So he was going to lose, and...

She frowned. This was not right. Those two were the first ones of their kind she had met; she could not just let them die like that! Ken-chan would win, yes, but that did not mean that Baldy had to die. She would not let that happen, for Baldy, and for Pretty-Boy with the sad eyes.

*

It made Ikkaku's heart ache to think too much about all those things. At first, he had tortured himself long and hard, wondering why things were so different from the way they were for Zaraki Kenpachi and Kusajishi Yachiru, and what he could do to make them better, more like those two. He did not _want_ things to be the way they were, he wanted to _change_ them.

Though... He remembered the report he had read just this morning. It had said that even though the tall guy was the primary entity, the little girl was the one with most of the spirit and aggression. She did not have as much power as he did, but she bullied him and pushed him around. This was yet another combination, so maybe there was no rule about those things after all? Maybe each pair just figured their own balance, and no particular arrangement was better than another? He really wanted to believe that...

It was hard, though. He wanted to believe that his relationship with Yumichika was working just fine, but he knew it was not. Yumichika was holding himself back, he was hiding his true nature, his true zanpakutou, his true shikai, he was hiding all of this and himself behind Ikkaku, and no matter what Ikkaku did, he just would not open up to him. It broke Ikkaku's heart to think that Yumichika was _afraid_ of telling him the truth, and he wished with everything he had that he could _tell_ him that he already knew, and that it was all right really, and that there was so much more he did not understand yet.

But he could not. He did not know why, but he could not tell him. Nor could fukutaichou tell Zaraki-taichou. They had discussed this again and again, trying to pinpoint what was compelling them to keep the secret, wondering endlessly why only they knew, why the other two didn't, and whether there was a way, _any_ way, to tell them somehow.

He knew fukutaichou was not happy with her situation either, no matter how much better it was than Ikkaku and Yumichika's. It made her sad beyond words whenever Zaraki-taichou bemoaned his stagnating progress, or when he talked dismissively about zanpakutou spirits and shinigami-zanpakutou relationships. Ikkaku was the one who would hold her on those nights when she needed to cry her heart out because her Ken-chan was being such a stupid, uncaring idiot, so Ikkaku knew only too well about her pain.

In return, he had told her everything about his own confusion and distress, as the years passed and more and more unlikely developments occurred. For example, those two Arrancar had had a common release, which made sense. Zaraki-taichou was always in shikai and fukutaichou had no release at all, which also made sense. But Ikkaku and Yumichika... They did _not_ make any sense! Ikkaku still remembered the shock he had felt when he had realised that Yumichika, in his desperate attempt to deny himself, had gone as far as identifying their respective natures in the form of two zanpakutou spirits! It was insane, it was something that only someone as pig-headed and psychologically unbalanced as Yumichika could ever achieve, but it was very, very real indeed.

And once the lie had started, Yumichika had stopped at _nothing_ to keep it running. The zanpakutou spirits materialised, both of them obtained shikai, Ikkaku went on to get bankai, and Yumichika took the perversion to yet another level when he invented a false shikai for himself in order to hide his true nature. Unfortunately, with each step, Yumichika only became more despondent, less happy - not that he had ever been truly happy to begin with, but the depths of self-loathing he was stooping to those days made Ikkaku almost physically sick with heartache. And so now here they were, both of them stuck in a maze of lies and secrets which were threatening to kill them at any time, and Ikkaku had no idea whatsoever how to escape from it.

*

"He read it too, right?"

"Yeah."

"And yet...?"

"And yet nothin', no. Didn't react one bit."

"Hmph... I mentioned it to Ken-chan at lunch, but he said he didn't care and that he only wished he'd been there to take the buggers on himself."

"..."

"They'll never get it, will they?"

"Probably not."

"Then they'll die, won't they?"

"Everybody dies eventually, fukutaichou."

"Yeah... But not like that, Pachinko, not like that."

"No... Not like that."

They did not want their Ken-chan and Yumichika to die without ever realising their full potential and the truth of their relationship with Yachiru and Ikkaku - but what could they do about it?

They were only their masters' servants after all.

***

The End

***


End file.
